A bold daylight attack on a police station here Saturday has underscored a growing concern: Can Iraq's fledgling security forces maintain order after the planned June 30 US transfer of power to Iraqi authorities?

Ready or not, the process is beginning. US forces are already adopting a lower profile, moving their bases to the periphery of Baghdad and other urban centers. While the new Iraqi police, the civil defense corps, and Army will still receive backup from American-led coalition troops, Iraqi and US officials are voicing doubts about Iraq's ability to handle such hot spots as the volatile Sunni triangle west and north of Baghdad.

Moreover, no one seems certain about the identity of the enemy. The audacious assault here Saturday by some 35 well-organized insurgents killed 22 policemen and a civilian, and freed more than 70 prisoners. Iraq's neighbors are worried at the continuing instability in iraq, fearing a breakup of the country into sectarian statelets which could have repercussions on their own countries. In a meeting in Kuwait over the weekend, bordering countries agreed to boost border frontier security measures to prevent infiltrators from joining the Iraq insurgency. An additional difficulty is that no one seems certain about the identity of the enemy.

Despite the apparent all-Iraqi composition of the recent attack in Fallujah, the coalition authorities are blaming foreign fighters connected to Al Qaeda, rather than homegrown insurgents, for the bulk of large-scale attacks in the area, such as two suicide bombings last week outside Army and police recruitment centers in which more than 100 Iraqis died.

"We've had a pattern of suicide bombing over the last three or four months that exactly fit the strategy that's been outlined by an Al Qaeda terrorist here named Zarqawi," Paul Bremer, the US overseer in Iraq, said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."

The coalition last week released a letter purportedly written by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian suspected of carrying out some of the most deadly bombings in Iraq, which called for Al Qaeda's assistance to foment a civil war by attacking Iraq's dominant Shiite community.

But in Fallujah, the identity of the culprits is proving not so clear cut and what people say about them appears to be based on a mix of fact, fiction, prejudice, and wishful thinking.

A senior Iraqi civil defense officer, who asked not to be identified, says that ex-Army soldiers were involved in the two-pronged assault, a view supported by the US military.

"The attack was definitely conducted by people with military experience," says the soldier, a former officer in the Iraqi Army during Hussein's regime. "They blocked off the street and controlled the corners around both buildings and the two groups of attackers were in radio communication with each other. It was a very well-organized attack." He added that IDs belonging to former Iraqi Army officers were found after the assault and one captured attacker was an Iraqi citizen.

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